Ex-chief in Princeton gets month’s pay deal

Wednesday

Jan 30, 2013 at 6:00 AMJan 30, 2013 at 10:19 AM

By Hunter Amabile CORRESPONDENT

Former Princeton Fire Chief David F. Cobb — charged in October with stealing narcotics from the town ambulance — initially sought to receive one-fourth of his yearly salary of $71,000, plus three months of health insurance, in exchange for his resignation.

Mr. Cobb’s request was made public this week when the Board of Selectmen released its executive session minutes from Nov. 5. Selectmen chose to deny the settlement request.

Instead, selectmen offered $12,270.25, which represented a month’s worth of salary and insurance costs, for his letter of resignation dated Nov. 17, 2012.

Mr. Cobb, 45, of Cutler Road in the Jefferson section of Holden, was arraigned in Worcester and Gardner District courts on one count of larceny of a drug and one count of obtaining drugs by fraud. Those charges are still pending.

According to court records, the charges came after pharmacists at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester and Heywood Hospital in Gardner notified state police that “excessive amounts of narcotics were being dispensed to the Princeton Fire Department.”

This spurred an audit conducted by the State Police, which found missing amounts of Fentanyl, morphine, Valium and Versed in the records. Mr. Cobb was the primary record keeper, and the person who signed for the drugs.

Selectmen placed Mr. Cobb on paid leave July 7, 2012, and he was put on unpaid leave Nov. 5, 2012.

According to meeting minutes of a Nov. 5, 2012, executive session, Mr. Cobb’s lawyer, John Collins, asked selectmen to approve the immediate resignation with three months’ severance pay.

Selectmen said since Mr. Cobb had been paid for several months, the board was “adamant about not paying another penny,” the minutes read.

On Nov. 14, selectmen agreed to offer a lump-sum settlement to take Mr. Cobb off the payroll and “close the matter quickly, once and for all,” the minutes read.

Selectmen recently put out the call to interested parties to reform the Fire Chief Search Committee, which was disbanded after hiring Mr. Cobb in January of 2012.

Acting Fire Chief John Bennet has taken over since Mr. Cobb was placed on leave.